Fanboys
by just jen
Summary: Five shorts from the Jonathan-universe of 'Superstar'. Think of this as the other leg of the trousers of time. Does that make sense? Well, it's probably quantum.
1. Andrew

Title: Fanboys  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Author: Jen  
  
Summary: Dedicated followers of Jonathan.  
  
Author's note 1: Set in the Jonathan-verse created in 'Superstar', but before the events of 'Superstar' actually take place. If that makes sense. Think of this as the other leg of the trousers of time. Does it make sense now? Well, it's probably quantum.  
  
Author's note 2: Written with the aid of Diet Vanilla Coke, Magnum Gluttony, Evanescence's 'Fallen' and my friend Chris's laptop. Thanks to various members of the Xandrew community for turning me on to Evanescence.  
  
Disclaim-a-rama: I own nothing, I know no one, I am earning nothing from this.  
  
*****  
  
Three years' worth of 'Jonathan' comics, each one in its original plastic bag. The later ones are pristine, since he got into the habit of buying two copies of each: one to read, one to save. Sometimes he worries that the earlier ones are too tattered, that the pages are too dog-eared and thumb-worn, but still, it's an impressive collection. Not even Tucker has this many. On rainy afternoons, he still likes to sit himself on the window-sill in his room and work his way through the long story arcs, re-familiarising himself with the dialogue and looking out for meanings he might have missed.  
  
Five action figures. He hates himself sometimes for having taken them out of their boxes. Somewhere in the house he's sure there's a sixth, with a missing arm that was lost in a ferocious battle with Tucker's He-Man. Tucker has seven, three in their original boxes, but Tucker does not have the limited edition eleven-inch pose-able figure that has real hair and came with a cardboard display background depicting the old High School and fake plastic chunks of dead mayor-snake. He mowed the lawn every day for a month to save up enough for that one. Tucker says seeing the actual mayor-snake was better, but Andrew doesn't believe him.  
  
Eight hundred and thirty-seven trading cards. Most of these he paid for with his lunch money, hunger pangs being a small price to pay for the fluttery feeling he gets each time he opens up a new pack of cards. Sometimes he wishes his dad would get a credit card so he could track down the rare ones on ebay.  
  
There are posters too, but now they're stored in cardboard tubes in the back of his closet. Tucker had laughed at him for putting up Jonathan posters. He'd told his dad on Tucker, but dad didn't like them either, so they had to come down. Seven-of-Nine is back up on his walls now. He doesn't like her quite so much, but they don't make Tucker laugh at him.  
  
Andrew thinks he has fuzzy memories of Tucker bringing home a kid from school who looked a lot like Jonathan. Back when they were both in the same school, before Tucker went off to college. It couldn't have been the real Jonathan of course, even though Tucker claims he knows him, because why would someone like Jonathan ever come to their house for dinner?  
  
But sometimes, Andrew likes to think that maybe it really was Jonathan. Because then, one day Tucker might come home during vacation and shout, "Hey everybody, I bumped into an old friend today. Come see who it is!" And Andrew will leave his room and head downstairs into the kitchen, and there he'll be. All chummy with Tucker, but that can't be helped because they'd have to be good friends for him to come here, but it'll be Jonathan Levinson in his own kitchen where he eats breakfast and does his homework.   
  
He'll make small talk with their parents for a while, and then he'll look round. Spy Andrew lurking nervously in the doorway. Say, "Andrew? Andrew, is that you?" Because of course he'll recognise Andrew from the days when he used to hang out here with Tucker, when they were kids, even though Tucker always made him go away whenever he brought friends home. And Andrew will smile, nervous but pleased that Jonathan remembers him, and Jonathan will ignore Tucker's protests and invite him to sit with them. He'll offer Andrew one of their beers and it won't make him cough and splutter like the one he stole from the fridge one time when his dad was away, and they'll sit and shoot the breeze, him and Tucker and Jonathan Levinson.  
  
Andrew likes to save this fantasy for the really bad days: the ones when it feels like everyone's out to get him and the only place he can find any peace is in his room with the chair shoved under the door handle to keep it from being opened. Sometimes the daydream just ends there, in the kitchen, with the three of them talking like old friends. Sometimes, though, something happens to make Tucker leave and then it's just him and Jonathan, alone in their house. Then there's a slow dissolve as the scene shifts to his bedroom, and he's laying down (he's always laying down, so that way Jonathan can look down at him because the thought of anyone looking down on Jonathan is just wrong), and Jonathan kneels over him, whispers something soft like, "Look at you, you're all grown up now, Andrew," and then...wow. He'll know then that no one's ever been so close to Jonathan as he is.  
  
That's all he wants. To be close to Jonathan. Everyone says they want to be close to Jonathan, but no one wants it like Andrew does.  
  
***** 


	2. Riley

He's never been much of a thinker. Never had to be. That's not what the military looks for. He follows orders.  
  
What that says about him, he doesn't know. He just does his job.  
  
He's good at his job. Really good, and they keep telling him so, which is enough of an ego boost to keep him at it. Riley just wonders sometimes if maybe there's more.  
  
In spite of his skills and abilities and hostile-bagging scores, he's just another soldier. Wearing the same uniform as countless other guys. He blends in. He's nothing special.  
  
There aren't many people who are counted as special in this world, and Riley knows he's lucky to be around of the people who are. For all his fans and hangers-on, Jonathan doesn't let too many people in. Out of all the Initiative top dogs, Riley's the only one who gets to call him 'Jonathan'.  
  
Sometimes it's weird hearing them say 'Mr Levinson', like he's just a civilian. Technically, of course, he's Doctor Levinson, but a medical degree doesn't count for much among decorated officers. Riley thinks there should be a rank, though. Jonathan doesn't belong in the crowd.  
  
It's wrong, Riley knows, but sometimes he doesn't want to be part of the crowd either. There's nothing wrong with the crowd, of course: some of those guys are almost family now. Riley still wants to be like them. He just wants to be like Jonathan too.  
  
The big question is, is it worth the sacrifice? If his pursuit of excellence takes him away from his friends, can he deal? Can he leave them behind if it takes him closer to Jonathan?  
  
***** 


	3. Xander

Xander's not into guys. That's what he tells himself every morning when he wakes up to Jonathan's face, staring down at him from the dozen or so posters that Anya's plastered on every single wall.  
  
It's weird, this having to remind himself. Xander's pretty sure that it's not even supposed to be an issue: that he's not supposed to worry about it. He shouldn't think about not thinking about guys. They should just be there, and he should just be Xander, not this big mess of angst that's been posing as Xander lately.  
  
He thinks maybe it's the smile. It's a great smile: self-assured, but not cocky. It smiles up at him from every comic and book and video in the room. It's hard to avoid.  
  
Usually he can rationalise it as a confidence thing. The guy oozes confidence, and it's tough not to be drawn to that. Everyone's drawn to Jonathan.  
  
It's when the smile starts to make him all wibbly, that he starts to worry. Guys should not make him wibbly.  
  
And it's not just the smile.  
  
Last week, Anya brought over a copy of Jonathan's album. Xander still hasn't taken it out of his CD player. He tells himself it's because they had sex while it was playing: it's a reminder of sex. Sex with Anya. It's certainly not that the music is sexy. Even if the voice is smooth as melted chocolate and makes his insides soften like snow in the sun. That's certainly not why he falls asleep listening to it.  
  
It's not getting any easier now that Jonathan's working alongside the Slayer-circle. Back in school Xander was just one of dozens of kids who got to watch Jonathan from across the cafeteria or down the hallways, but now he's patrolling with them, hanging out in Giles' apartment... Once he even sat next to Xander on Giles' couch.  
  
Of course, it helps that none of the group seems to notice any differences in Xander's behaviour. The girls are allowed to swoon and fawn over Jonathan, so they focus all their attention on him instead of on Xander. Riley's too wrapped up in Buffy to pay attention to anyone else, and Giles...well, Giles still has the stiff-upper-lippiness going for him, so it's hard to tell what he's thinking. They just leave Xander alone to wonder why his body insists on liquefying inside whenever Jonathan's around.  
  
Denial's become habitual, he knows that. Even when he wants to let everyone know just how amazing he feels, the hiding just happens without him even having to think about it. Because he's not into guys. It's not his fault if he tingles whenever he's close to Jonathan.  
  
***** 


	4. Giles

The problem with Watchers, the one overriding fault, is that they're not cut out for dealing with children. They work with books and dates and historical accounts, not teenage girls.  
  
Of course, back in the earliest days of the Council, a sixteen-year-old girl would have been considered an adult. A Slayer's contemporaries would most likely have been married and raising their own children.  
  
Not like the adolescents Giles has to work with.  
  
Well, maybe part of the problem is that they are adolescents. To their credit, they've survived some fairly horrific things, but Giles knows that's mostly down to luck. And partly due to the interventions of a certain Mr Levinson.  
  
Which is a paradox in itself, because Jonathan is only as old as his own Slayer. Giles remembers seeing him around the halls of Sunnydale High back when he first arrived there, sometimes in the Library with the students he tutored, sometimes just chatting with his friends between classes. It's just hard to believe sometimes that Jonathan is only eighteen.  
  
Giles tries to draw hope from this fact. If Jonathan is capable of so much at such a tender age, then surely his own Slayer can achieve something close?  
  
There's an occasional pang of guilt, but he has his reasons for making her work so hard. He wants to be proud of her, wants his Slayer to be more than just the latest in a long line of Chosen Ones. He trains her so she can be special. More like him. Giles just wants to bring her closer to Jonathan.   
  
***** 


	5. Jonathan

He shouldn't be on this side of the table. It doesn't feel right. Even though he's the one they're all queuing up to see, there's something fundamentally wrong about it.  
  
He's supposed to be in the queue, shuffling slowly along in the leviathan of a human snake that winds around the hall, the bubbly feeling in his belly growing with each step forward until he's the one at the front of the line. He's supposed to be asking for autographs, not signing them.  
  
This is what he wanted, though. There's still a buzz inside him when he reminds himself that all these hundreds of people are queuing up to see him. He's the star.  
  
It's just...sometimes he feels nostalgic for the old days. Bus-ing out to some venue where he'd lose himself in the crowd inside, sharing in that combined elation of breathing the same air as his idols. The days when he was the one who got star-struck.   
  
He had so many autographs, so many memories of those wonderful meetings. He remembers losing all power of speech in front of James Doohan, and being hypnotised by Terry Farrell's smile. He remembers the surreal feeling that came with meeting Nicole deBoer and realising he was on eye-level with her when she stood up.  
  
That's all gone now, though. It's weird, and sometimes hard to reconcile. Hard to remember which are his real memories and which ones came with the spell. In this world he doesn't have their autographs. In this world, some of them have his autograph.  
  
It's definitely better here. No doubt about that. Anything's better than what he was. He's just having some difficulty adjusting.  
  
There's still a couple of dozen people left in line, but his hand is cramping up and the recycled air in the hall has left his throat dry and sore. One of the convention crew leans in and whispers a reminder that his Q-and-A session is due to begin in two minutes. He nods his grateful affirmation, and mutters in reply, "one more, then we'll wrap this up."  
  
Convention-guy makes the announcement as he signs his name again, bold cursive script across his own smiling face, and another stuttering fan scuttles away to share her prize with her friends. There's a collective groan of complaint in response to the proclamation, and he prepares an apologetic smile for the remaining few who did not make it in time. Looks up to say sorry, but finds himself face to face with a kid on the verge of tears, his expression crumbling at the prospect of rejection.  
  
The rest of the crowd is being ushered away by convention-guy, but the kid still hovers three feet from the table, running a hand through dirty-blonde hair. Jonathan recognises the bitter disappointment, remembers standing in line for two hours in another world to find himself next-but-one when Mark Hamill ended a signing session. The look on the boy's face is impossible to resist.  
  
"Last one," he concedes, with a conspiratorial smile. Beckons the kid forward. He hesitates a moment more, hopeful uncertainty flickering in his eyes, then darts forward to the table. "What's your name?"  
  
The kid gushes his reply, breathing heavily with barely-suppressed excitement. Sometimes it's still hard to accept that people get this way over him, over Jonathan. Across the black-and-white glossy, he scribbles; 'to Andrew - hope this is reward enough for your patience. Jonathan Levinson'. The J and L in his signature take up almost half the page.  
  
When he hands over the picture, the kid stares unbelievingly at it, holding it reverentially like it's a treasure map or something. Jonathan watches uneasily, trying to recapture that sense of awe and achievement.   
  
What is there to achieve here?  
  
Convention-guy steps up to the table again, blocking his view of the blonde kid and snapping him out of his reverie. No need to strive for anything here, he reminds himself. Here, he can have whatever he wants.   
  
He's escorted away from his table, choosing to ignore the fact that, when he steps down from the platform on which he'd been placed, convention-guy suddenly stands a foot-and-a-half taller than him. There's always some kind of platform, or stage, or raised seat: something to make sure that when he sits down he isn't on groin-level with the people he speaks to.  
  
Predictably, the Q-and-A overruns by almost an hour as hordes of adoring fangirls and boys interrogate him about the amazing life he's conjured. By the time he manages to leave the stage, he's hoarse and sweating and suddenly desperate to be alone. The crew know to leave him well alone after these things: he'll be escorted to whatever private room they've set aside for him and he'll lock the door behind them and be by himself.  
  
It's not going to be enough today.  
  
As they march smartly down some dingy corridor, he spots a green 'exit' sign over a fire door. He glances left and right at the suited security officers who flank him and announces, "Gentlemen, I'm going out. I may be some time." They laugh obediently, exchange a look over his head that he can't see, and mutter reluctant acknowledgements. He leaves them to hover in the corridor, and ducks outside.  
  
The breeze is like a cold-shower-shock to his system, making his eyes sting and fluttering his lapels like sandcastle flags. His sweat-damp shirt clings icily to his torso, and he has a sudden craving for a hot chocolate.  
  
Once the chill becomes familiar, he manages to look around and properly gauge his whereabouts. Somewhere at the rear of the centre, evidently, since there's no sign of a parking lot. About twenty yards down the wall there's another door, and a pair of chrome-coloured dumpsters. A chain-link fence runs parallel to the side of the building, and through it he can see, in the middle-distance, another enormous box-shaped building, embellished with some unreadable company logo. He wonders idly what's inside it.   
  
Somewhere overhead, a jumbo-jet scoots on by, leaving a rumpled white scar across the perfect blue summer sky. It's almost pretty.  
  
Further down the wall, the other fire door jolts open and a lanky, awkward figure staggers out on to the concrete. Jonathan turns his head as the door rebounds off the wall and swings closed again. The boy - it's definitely a boy, too angular and rangy to be a woman - stumbles to a halt and looks at him. He waits for the recognition to hit the boy's face. It's followed by disbelief, then astonishment. Too surprised to be angry about this intrusion into his moment of privacy, Jonathan prepares his trademark smile, but it falters when he realises the boy is rooted to the spot.  
  
It's strange, this stretchy fragment of time in which they both stare at each other down twenty yards of concrete path, like something's supposed to happen any moment, as soon as they remember what it is.  
  
Jonathan manages a few small steps towards the kid, forgetting to square his shoulders and pull himself up to his full five feet and two inches, the way he normally would around someone so tall as this boy. Like a fairground mirror image, the boy moves forward also, and now there's maybe just ten yards between them. Jonathan's hands slip into his pockets, trying to regain just a hint of nonchalance. The boy runs a hand through bleached-blonde hair, and Jonathan remembers where he's seen the kid before. Remembers the trembling lower lip at the prospect of being denied his moment in Jonathan's personal space.   
  
What's the kid's name again? Adam? Alan? Andrew?  
  
"Hi." Finally he manages a smile. Possibly-Andrew responds with a wide-eyed stare and what might almost be a grin. Jonathan gives him a quick once-over, trying to guess his age. Sixteen, maybe seventeen. Certainly not much younger than Jonathan himself. Just a kid. But then, Jonathan doesn't feel his age. Doesn't feel eighteen. Definitely does not feel like a kid.  
  
Probably-not-Alan is still staring, but the astonishment is quickly fading. Melting into something else that Jonathan soon recognises. He's seen this look plenty of times before, but he's still getting used to seeing it on male faces. When he wished for everyone to love him, this was hardly what he'd had in mind.  
  
Seeing girls shoot him that look, the one he eventually realised signified lust, was easy enough to deal with. Watching guys look at him like that, well... definitely weird.  
  
In the first couple of weeks, after the spell kicked in, there were plenty of backstage clinches with eager fangirls: rushed fumbles in dressing rooms and corridors, until the novelty began to tarnish, and the girls just became background things, better brushed aside and out of his way. Mostly, he ignores the guys, although sometimes it gets a bit eerie. Security guys in his entourage who brush against him a little too often. Military bods whose eyes linger a fraction too long on his khaki-ed chest. Long, deliberate stares during his chess games with Rupert. But he puts it out of his mind. Just another part of the general everyday adoration. After all, he's Jonathan.  
  
He's never really wondered, until now.  
  
Could-be-Andrew takes another step forward, and the look is unmistakable now. Jonathan finds himself entertaining the possibility. It takes the weirdness to a whole new level.   
  
But would it be so freaky? He wanted to be loved, after all.  
  
The thought stays just that, though, as the fire door thunks open again and one of his security suits appears, followed by two convention guys who pant and sweat in their black 'crew' T-shirts.   
  
Blondie's head snaps around at the noise, his entire body stiffening as he flips into panic-mode. Crew guys one and two take advantage of his shock and bustle forward, each taking an arm as they escort the kid back in the way he came out.  
  
"Sorry about that, mister Levinson." Security adjusts his jacket. "He slipped past the staff. We'll escort him off the premises, make sure he doesn't sneak back in."   
  
He can only nod as the suit marches smartly back inside behind the convention guys. The door closes just as it occurs to him to tell them to go easy on the boy. He keeps quiet. The whole thing has him kind of off-balance. For all the people around him, it's not often someone manages to get close to Jonathan.  
  
***** 


End file.
